With his end-of-days disaster pic “Melancholia” currently in production, Danish auteur Lars von Trier has unveiled slight details on the project at a European press conference which preceded the film’s production.

Described in press materials as “a psychological disaster movie [and] a beautiful film about the end of the world,” von Trier went on to add (in a rough Google translation) that he hoped “the film is personal. I do not know, until we find it. I can tell about what the movie is about, but do not know why I’m doing it. I have a plan, and no one will ever find out what the plan is.”

“It’s a story about two sisters and a planet,” he added of the film whose title references Planet Melancholia, an enormous planet that evidently looms threateningly close to Earth in this story. “Kirsten [Dunst] is getting married, but only for a short while, of course.” Dunst will evidently play Charlotte Gainsbourg’s sister and is set to exchange vows with Alexander Skarsgaard, with his father Stellan playing his best man and John Hurt playing Dunst’s father.
Dunst, the apparent female lead, intriguingly added that “what is different is that Lars instructs without [rehearsal] and it gives real things life. This is a continuing challenge for myself and with the material. [There’s] poetry in the way he tortures women.”

A similar sentiment was also shared by the film’s male protagonist Kiefer Sutherland, who added that “filming ‘live’ without any rehearsals” was a first-time experience in his career. While he failed to provide any insight on his own character, he did reveal that he wasn’t playing a Jack Bauer-type saving-the-world hero but simply that his “character represents what is right, while Kirsten Dunst represents what is left. There is an important balance in the film.”

Cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro, who is replacing Anthony Dod Mantle, went on to clarify the improvisational methodology. “Each day we begin without instruction, and are then given instructions along the route. The actors are completely wild and very sweet and well prepared.”

When asked about the look of the film, von Trier hilariously replied in typical fashion that “it looks like shit… No, I hope not. But it is certainly a little uglier than the previous one. ” The film also co-stars Jesper Christensen, Charlotte Rampling, Udo Kier and Brady Corbet and is expected to premiere May-June of next year, likely setting it up for a Cannes premiere. Chaos will reign once more.